Authors: Jennifer Estep
The next day dawned all too quickly, bringing with it another round of snow—and most likely my messy death at the hands of Mab Monroe.
Last night had taken its toll on us all, physically and emotionally, which was why everyone was still asleep when I slipped out of Owen’s warm arms around ten the next morning.
Everyone except Jo-Jo, that is. The dwarf sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in her pink flannel housecoat and sipping a cup of lavender tea. The fragrant fumes filled the air, making it smell warm and soothing. I breathed in, drawing what comfort I could from this safe, quiet moment. Because all too soon, I knew it would be gone—and perhaps me along with it.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep like everyone else?” I asked Jo-Jo, as I opened the kitchen cabinets to see what supplies were on hand for a late breakfast.
“I slept plenty before I spelled Sophia from guard duty,” Jo-Jo said. “Now, I’m restless, just like you are.”
I grunted.
Restless
wasn’t quite the word that I would use to describe my mood. More like
resigned
. I pushed the feeling aside and started pulling ingredients out of the cabinets. Flour, sugar, salt, and all the other nonperishable staples that Fletcher had packed the cabin with. If I was going to go out today, then I wanted a good breakfast to help me along.
“I grabbed fresh milk, berries, butter, and a few other things from my fridge before coming over here last night,” Jo-Jo said. “Just in case you were inclined to feel like making breakfast this morning.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Got a glimpse of that with your Air magic, did you? Your precognition?”
Jo-Jo grinned.
“Tell me,” I murmured, opening the fridge and grabbing the milk. “Did you happen to see whether I manage to kill Mab today before she kills me? Because right now, I’d take any good news I could get.”
Instead of answering me, Jo-Jo stared down into her tea, as though she could read something in the leaves in the bottom of the mug. Hell, maybe she could, given her Air magic. After a moment, the dwarf seemed to decide something because she nodded and looked up at me with her clear eyes.
“Did I ever tell you how I first met Fletcher?”
I shook my head and moved over to the counter where I’d placed the rest of the ingredients.
“It was a week after Sophia was kidnapped.”
I jerked around in surprise, and the milk almost slipped
from my hands. “Sophia—Sophia was
kidnapped
? When? By whom?”
Jo-Jo’s hands tightened around her mug. “It happened almost fifty years ago. There was a sick, sadistic bastard by the name of Harley Grimes. Half giant, half dwarf, and all mean. Grimes and the rest of his clan of miscreants lived way up in the mountains, even farther up than Warren’s store, Country Daze. He saw Sophia one day, and he decided that he was going to have her. When I wouldn’t give her to him, he came into my salon and took her. Busted up the place, beat me real bad, then beat Sophia when she tried to stop him.”
Breakfast forgotten, I slid into the seat across from Jo-Jo.
Jo-Jo’s eyes clouded over, like she was reliving that terrible day—the day that her sister had been taken from her. I knew what she must be feeling all too well. The rage, the frustration, the helplessness. They all pulsed through me with every beat of my heart.
“I went after Grimes, of course, but I couldn’t find my way up the mountain to his hideout, and I couldn’t get past all the booby traps that he had strung through the woods. Besides, my magic is for healing, not killing. But I’d heard stories about someone who could help, who could kill, for the right price.”
“The Tin Man,” I whispered Fletcher’s assassin name.
Jo-Jo nodded. “So I went through the appropriate channels, and I made contact with him. I told Fletcher that if he brought Sophia back I would be his friend for life—that anything I had would be his, including my Air magic. He agreed to my deal and took off after Sophia.”
I could almost see the scene unfolding before my eyes. Fletcher, tall, strong, and in his prime as an assassin. Jo-Jo, desperate for her sister’s safe return. And Sophia—no, I couldn’t picture Sophia. Not as she might have been back then. Before—before her innocence was taken away from her.
“What—what did Grimes do to Sophia?” I asked.
Tears welled up in Jo-Jo’s eyes and trickled down her face. “Just about every awful thing that you can imagine. Rape, torture, beatings. He made her into a slave, made her work from sunup until sundown, then come in and warm his bed at night. Grimes and one of his brothers had some Fire magic in them. The two of them would spend hours torturing her with it—burning her, blistering her skin, even making her breathe it in like cigarette smoke.”
An odd thought crossed my mind. “Is that—is that why Sophia’s voice is the way it is? So raspy and broken? Because Grimes made her breathe in elemental Fire?”
Jo-Jo nodded. “It damaged her vocal cords something fierce. I offered to fix it for her with my Air magic, but she wouldn’t let me. She just—wouldn’t.”
I leaned over and grabbed Jo-Jo’s hand, trying to offer her what comfort I could, even though I hadn’t even been born when all of this had happened. But so much made sense to me now. Why Fletcher had such a close relationship with the Deveraux sisters, why they’d helped him so much all these years, even why Sophia was the way that she was—moody, withdrawn, broken. My heart ached for the Goth dwarf. My torment at the hands of Mab had been nothing compared to what she’d endured.
Jo-Jo swiped away her tears and continued with her story. “Fletcher kept his word. He went up that mountain, and he did what I asked him to do, what he’d trained himself to do as the Tin Man. It took him two weeks of guerrilla warfare tactics, but he killed a whole passel of Grimes’s men and hurt Grimes himself real bad. Fletcher would have killed the bastard, if one of Grimes’s men hadn’t gutshot Fletcher. He was almost dead when he showed up on my front porch, but Fletcher rescued Sophia and brought her back home to me. And he made sure that Grimes never bothered us again. Every time that bastard came sniffing around, Fletcher let him know exactly what would happen—that Fletcher would finish the job he started and kill Grimes if he didn’t stay up there on his damn mountain and leave us alone.”
Jo-Jo fell silent, lost in her thoughts once more. Then she looked at me again, a fierce light burning in her pale eyes.
“Fletcher Lane was the finest man that I ever met, and he was certainly the best assassin. But you know what, Gin? Fletcher told me something a few weeks before he died—something about
you
.”
“And what would that be?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
Jo-Jo speared me with a hard look. “He told me that you were even better than he was. That you had the kind of cold, iron will that few people have. That you weren’t afraid to do what needed to be done. But the most important thing he told me was this—that if anyone could kill Mab, it was you. Don’t you see, Gin? It’s what he’s been
preparing you for all these years. It’s why he trained you in the first place, it’s why he made you into the Spider. So you could do what needed to be done to save your sister, just like he saved mine all those years ago.”
Jo-Jo drew in a breath. “That’s why I’m telling you this now. If Sophia could survive all the horrible things Grimes did to her, then you can survive Mab too, just like you did when you were a little girl. And I need you to survive, Gin. We all do. We lost Fletcher already. We can’t lose you too.”
I sat there holding the dwarf’s hand, but I wasn’t really there with her. Instead, I was with the old man. A thousand images of him flashed through my mind then, from the way he leaned over the counter at the Pork Pit reading his latest book to how he’d always had a hot meal waiting there for me when I’d come back from an assignment.
But mostly, I thought about how Fletcher had always believed in me, how he’d never once wavered in his support of me, how he’d been so patient in teaching me all the things that had helped me survive.
Genevieve Snow, Gin Blanco, the Spider; whatever I called myself, one thing remained the same—Fletcher Lane had fiercely loved me, and I’d loved the old man just as much in return. Enough to follow in his footsteps as an assassin. Enough to avenge his murder. And more than enough to take on this final impossible task of killing Mab Monroe.
“What are you thinking, Gin?” Jo-Jo asked.
A cold smile curved my lips. “I’m thinking that I’ll be damned if I’m going to disappoint the old man and
rob us both of our revenge on Mab, even if Fletcher isn’t around to see it.”
By the time the others came down to the kitchen, Jo-Jo and I had both regained our composure, and I’d whipped up enough food to feed an army. Sweet raspberry pancakes, blackberry biscuits, lots of scrambled eggs, piles of sizzling bacon and country-fried ham, creamy peach smoothies. All that and more waited on the kitchen table and surrounding countertops, and the air smelled of all the sugar, spices, and grease that I’d used to create my last supper, as it were.
One by one, they trudged down the stairs and planted themselves in the kitchen. Finn, Xavier, Roslyn, Sophia, Eva, Warren, Violet, and finally Owen. I handed everyone a plate and forced them to eat, chattering inane pleasantries all the while.
“Somebody’s had too much sugar this morning,” Finn mumbled into his coffee mug, waiting for the chicory fumes to rouse him from his postsleep stupor.
“Nonsense,” I declared, mussing his walnut-colored hair. “I haven’t had nearly enough yet.”
I ate more than anyone else, stuffing down as much food as I could stomach. I’d need the calories and energy boost before the day was through. Everything tasted fine, as long as I didn’t think about Bria and how Mab had tortured her last night, could still be torturing her. But there was nothing I could do to help her right now, nothing at all, so I made myself swallow biscuit after biscuit, even if they all plummeted to the bottom of my stomach like lead weights.
Once everyone was finished, I got up and started to wash the dishes, but Warren grabbed the plate out of my right hand, while his granddaughter, Violet, snagged the one out of my left hand.
“You sit right back down, missy,” Warren said in his high, thin, reedy voice. “Violet and I will wash the dishes.”
The old man hadn’t combed his hair yet today, and the wispy white strands stuck up every which way over his forehead. The frizz in his hair matched the fuzzy mess of Violet’s blond locks, even though she’d tried to tame hers. A family trait, right along with their dark brown eyes and tan skin that hinted at their Cherokee heritage.
The two of them moved over to the sink. I slipped back into my chair next to Owen, my eyes going to the clock on the wall. High noon already. The hours were ticking down until my meeting with Mab at dusk.
Everyone saw me staring at the clock, and I forced myself to smile.
“Don’t look so glum, folks,” I quipped. “My funeral isn’t officially for six more hours yet.”
“What are you going to do, Gin?” Violet asked me, her dark eyes wide behind her black glasses. “About Mab and the meeting tonight?”
I shrugged. “There’s nothing to do but go through with things and meet her. I imagine that once I trade myself for Bria, Mab will get on with the business of killing me.”
The Fire elemental murdering both Bria and me was far more likely, but I didn’t voice that troublesome thought.
“Mab isn’t going to kill you—not if we can help it,” Owen rumbled, putting his hand on top of mine and squeezing it tight.
I frowned at him. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Owen looked at the others, then back at me. “It means that while you were cooking breakfast, we had a powwow upstairs. We’re all in agreement, Gin. You’re not going to meet Mab by yourself. We’re going with you—all of us.”
I was just—stunned. Simply stunned that my friends would want to do such a thing, that they would even
consider
it. Trying to help me bring down Mab was just crazy on their part. Foolish. Insane. Stupid. Dangerous. Worry tightened my chest. So very, very dangerous.
“You—you can’t do that,” I protested. “This is between me and Mab. It always has been.”
“This is about family, darling,” Jo-Jo said in a firm voice. “You’re a part of us, a part of all of us, and we aren’t losing you without a fight, even if we do have to take on Mab and every single one of her giants.”
The others nodded their heads and murmured their agreement. All I could do was just stare at them.
Xavier with his massive frame. Beautiful, perfect Roslyn. Crotchedy, cranky Warren. Soft, pink Jo-Jo. Eva and Violet, who were both still so young, still so innocent. Sophia, who had been through more horrors than probably any of us really knew. Finn, with his bright green eyes that always reminded me so much of his father’s. And finally Owen, full of that strength and quiet inner confidence that had drawn me to him in the first place.
Eyes hard, mouths set, faces tight. They all radiated the same stubborn determination, as immovable, implacable, and eternal as the mountains themselves. Emotion tightened my throat at their belief in me, that I could actually
pull this off, that I could actually kill Mab and save Bria at the same time—even though I knew better deep down inside.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said in a rough, thick voice. “You all know the risks. Mab won’t let me slip through her fingers this time. She’ll have an army of men with her to make sure that doesn’t happen. Not just her giants, but the bounty hunters too. Folks like Gentry and Sydney. Dangerous people.”
“And you’re going to have an army of folks with you,” Xavier rumbled. “You’ve helped us all too much for us to abandon you now, Gin. You know that. We all know that. You’ve put your life on the line for each one of us. Now it’s our turn.”
One by one, the others all nodded their heads again, as if we were talking about having a spring picnic instead of going up against the deadliest woman in Ashland and all of her men. Didn’t they know that all of us taking on Mab was much more dangerous than just me facing the firing squad by myself? If one of them went down in the fight, the others would rush to help that fallen friend. Mab’s men would take advantage of their distraction, and then they’d all be lost.